In April, supermarket company Southeastern Grocers (SEG) announced a collaboration with a Canadian startup called Relocalize. The collaboration focused on a pilot ice manufacturing project that would place one of the startup’s autonomous ice for micro-factories at SEG's Jacksonville Distribution Center. 

Wayne McIntyre, co-founder and CEO of Relocalize, said the startup was formed to introduce hyper-local production to food systems. It began with the concept of producing food in a container, similar to vertical farming. But after exploring various applications, McIntyre discovered that his initial concepts were not economically viable.